A giant wave of toxic gas has been detected by Venus in an event never seen before in the solar system.
The planet-wide cloud travels at 200 mph through the upper atmosphere of Venus and was hidden for 35 years.
Described as an ‘atmospheric disturbance’ by the international team that discovered it, the wave extends to 4,660 miles.
That’s about 61,000 football pitches – if long enough to turn the breadth of the UK at its widest point into a fog of sour gas.
“If this happened on Earth, it would be a frontal surface on the scale of the planet,” said scientist Dr. Pedro Machado of the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Portugal.
“That’s unbelievable.”
Venus was once thought to be a habitable world like Earth, but is now almost as hostile to life as planets get.
A rampant glasshouse effect caused by swirling sulfuric acid clouds has raised its surface temperature to 465C (869F) – hot enough to melt lead.
Venus’ cloudy atmosphere and high winds are known to create enormous waves of gas, but no one likes this at all.
Investigators discovered the early anomaly after studying infrared images created by Japanese Venus orbiter Akatsuki between 2016 and 2018.
The wall of cloud sits about 31 miles above the surface of Venus and has been hovering over the planet every five days since at least 1983.
It is a phenomenon not seen anywhere else in the solar system, as it is the first of its kind to be detected at such low altitudes.
The research team, led by the Japanese space agency JAXA, believes that the gas wave may help solve mysteries surrounding the mysterious glass fiber effect of Venus.
It was found in the region responsible for the effect and may help experts understand how the planet’s surface connects to its turbulent atmosphere.
“Since the disturbance can not be observed in the ultraviolet images sensing the tops of the clouds at an altitude of about 70 kilometers (43 miles), confirming the wavelength is critical,” the JAXA said scientist Dr. Javier Peralta.
‘We would have finally found a wave that transports momentum and energy from the deep atmosphere and disappears before we reach the top of the clouds.
“It would therefore present momentum at the level where we observe the fastest winds of the so-called atmospheric superrotation of Venus, whose mechanisms have been mystical for a long time.”
Scientists do not yet know which mechanisms are responsible for the cloud wave.
More observations are underway in an attempt to shed more light on the mysterious phenomenon.
The study was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
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